BADALONA (Spain) - The Final of the Basketball Champions League Season X, powered by Ameresco SUNEL, provides us with an open book, displaying an almost blank page.
It seems hard to fathom for two clubs with such rich European histories as AEK BC and Rytas Vilnius, but this will only be the second season ever that the paths of these two giants have crossed in a continental competition.
To find the first meeting between AEK and Rytas, we need to go all the way back to the Regular Season of the 2006-07 ULEB Cup.
Rytas won both games against their Greek opponents en route to the Final that year. In the BCL, however, this Final marks the very first meeting between the two; a clean slate, as it were.
"Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same."
Or so goes the quote from Thanos in the Marvel classic, Infinity War. The strange situation we find ourselves in is that both of these teams have the feel of a team of destiny.
AEK have felt destined to reach this stage again since last year's Semi-Finals loss at home in Athens. The fact that they overcame that same foe, Unicaja, to reach the Final this year only amplifies those sensations.
For Rytas, having seen their talisman Jerrick Harding suffer such a scary injury at the start of the season, then return and steer them through heroics in the last game of the R16 to not only reach the Quarter-Finals, but also secure home advantage, this has also felt like a season where fate was on their side from the start.
How they got here
We already know that Rytas finished their Regular Season and Round of 16 groups with a 4-2 record, then cruised past ERA Nymburk in the Quarter-Finals.
And for AEK, we also already know that they have the best record in the competition this season with a 5-1 record in the Group Phase, an unblemished R16 with a 6-0 record, and battled through a 2-1 series win over the Final Four hosts Asisa Joventut.
What matters more is to focus on the respective Semi-Finals. Rytas overcame Tenerife in the first Semi-Final 87-69. It was the biggest winning margin of a Semi-Final since their opponents today, AEK, beat Casademont Zaragoza by 24 points in 2020.
Jerrick Harding's 29 points were the second-highest in Semi-Final history after Kyle Guy's 34 points in Belgrade.
AEK had the small task of knocking out the reigning back-to-back champions, Unicaja. They managed it with an impressive 78-65 final score.
The Queen's beastly defense held the Spaniard's to just 21 first-half points, the second-lowest in the history of this competition, and by far the lowest in Final Four history. They also shot 42 percent from deep, with Frank Bartley making four of nine from behind the arc on his way to 16 points.
What will this look like?
By now, we are sure you are aware, but Rytas are an offensive powerhouse. They score a league-high 90.5 points, and after the Semi-Final, they are also the most efficient team offensively, scoring at a rate of 120.4 points per 100 possessions.
In fact, they have a chance to become the first non-Spanish team to finish a season with such an efficient offense.
Everything starts for Rytas with their ability to get stops and run the break. In the clip below, you see two possessions early in the game where Martynas Paliukenas poked the ball away from Marcelinho Huertas, then ran the break, followed by a great shot contest and run-out dunk by Kay Bruhnke.
The impact that both plays had on their teammates, and perhaps more importantly, on the Rytas crowd, was huge. It was at that point in the game that Rytas stopped believing they could win and started to know they could win.
Speedy Smith also hit a massive transition three-pointer in the second half, and Jerrick Harding regularly looked to get down the floor quickly into transition ball screen actions. You also need to look out for early offense post-ups for Arturas Gudaitis. Rytas love to keep the tempo up by creating from the low post early in the offense.
In the halfcourt, you will see an awful lot of actions like the clip below; Jerrick Harding starting away from the ball and Rytas running an action to occupy the defense, whilst simultaneously running another action to get him the ball in an area of the floor where he can create.
We know that Harding will create a high volume of scoring situations for himself from these spread pick-and-roll actions, but it could be even more important to pay attention to the way he finds the likes of Arturas Gudaitis, Gytis Masiulis, and Martynas Echodas on the roll when the AEK defense sends two bodies to get the ball out of his hands.
Rytas also made 21 of their 31 free throw attempts in this game, which is in keeping with their 21.4 for the season. They are one of only three teams to have ever got to the line so consistently across a full season (UCAM Murcia in 2022/23, and Igokea m:tel in 2024/25).
That may sound high, but the way they attacked the bucket in the Semi-Final, if anything, they could have probably shot more.
Defensively, Rytas allowed Tenerife just to make just 2-of-16 from deep, mainly thanks to their defensive scheme of defending Huertas 2v2 in the pick-and-roll.
This wasn't new for the Lithuanians. For the season, 54.2 percent of all points they have allowed have come from two-point range, which is the highest in the BCL.
That also means they allow the lowest percentage of the points they concede to come from behind the arc. Additionally, they allow the lowest percentage of any team this season.
Their opponents AEK, are also mean when it comes to allowing their opponents to score from deep; they allow just 7.4 made threes per game. Only Legia Warszawa allowed fewer.
On the court this season, AEK have been one of the most physically dominant teams we have possibly ever seen in this competition. They seem to have a size and strength advantage in every position.
We saw that in the Semi-Finals, where they overpowered Unicaja defensively and bullied them on the offensive end. They held the Spaniards to just 36 percent shooting overall. They always had a body where one was needed to make life difficult for Unicaja.
AEK love to use a mixture of defensive schemes, especially switching systems like the one you see in the clip below.
We didn't see a high volume of switching vs. Unicaja, but faced with a scorer like Harding and creative playmakers like Smith and Augustus Marciulionis, it could be something to look out for to see AEK go to switching lineups early and often.
On the offensive end, we know how important it is for AEK to find the likes of Greg Brown III and Keyshawn Feazell for dunks. Everytime they throw one down, that AEK crowd will raise the decibels even higher.
James Nunnally is also another huge trigger for the crowd with his experience and understanding of when he needs to make a play or get a bucket. Watch out for him forcing Rytas bigs into switches and ruthlessly attacking them.
For all of AEK's ability to win the matchups and Dragan Sakota's ability to calculate lineups to put his players in the best position to surgically dissect their opponent's weakest link, a perhaps underrated element to this AEK team is their patience and ability to flow through to the last option of offensive sets in the pursuit of the best shot.
We know that RaiQuan Gray can create instant offense in the post, we know that Frank Bartley and Nunnally can create their own shot in the pick-and-roll, but what could be even more telling in this Semi-Final could be AEK's ability to control the tempo by playing long offenses.
They won't want to allow Rytas to speed the game up, so it may be that we see them using multiple actions before getting into their drive and kick game in the last few seconds of each possession.
They did this to great effect against Unicaja.
Lukas Lekavicius and Vasilis Charalampopoulos shot 67 percent and 50 percent, respectively, from deep in the Semi-Finals, and when they share the floor with players like Bartley and Nunnally, who gravitate defenders towards them, they both carry the type of shooting threat to break big games in their team's favor.
Lineups and go-to-guys
With no track record between these two teams in this competition, almost nothing about this Final is predictable. The one predictable thing is Rytas' starting lineup.
Barring injury or some kind of freak occurrence, we know that Giedrius Zibenas has trusted Speedy Smith, Ignas Sargiunas, Martynas Paliukenas, Kay Bruhnke, and Arturas Gudaitis whenever they have been available.
Jerrick Harding will come off the bench early, most likely with Augustus Marciulionis joining him in the back court, and Masiulis or Echodas coming on in the front court.
Jordan Caroline spells Bruhnke, and Simonas Lukosius brings his perimeter threat in to give Paliukenas a breather.
We know that Paliukenas will likely be given the unenviable task of trying to slow down the MVP of the season, Frank Bartley.
Those Paliukenas minutes will be huge for Rytas; they had an unbelievable Net Rating of +125 points per 100 possessions when he was on the floor in the Semi-Final. Speedy Smith's minutes also saw Rytas enjoy a +99 points per 100 possessions Net Rating in the game.
Gudaitis may not have the athleticism to match up with Feazell, but his strength in the post will cause the AEK man just as many headaches of their own. At the power forward, Bruhnke and Caroline against Gray and Brown will also be box office viewing.
AEK started the game against Unicaja with Dimitris Flionis, Frank Bartley, Vasilis Charalampopoulos, RaiQuan Gray, and Keyshawn Feazell.
There is no reason to believe that Sakota will deviate from that lineup after they held Ibon Navarro's reigning champions to just 65 points.
Lukas Lekavicius will come off the bench at guard and likely take the lion's share of the minutes. He had 14 points, 5 assists, and 4 rebounds in 25 minutes of the Semi-Finals. Nunnally will play both back court roles, and Brown will cover both front court positions.
Sakota reduced his rotation to just nine players seeing considerable minutes in the Semi-Final, and even then, Flionis played less than 10 minutes.
That will almost certainly change in the Final with Flionis the most likely defensive match up for the effervescent threat of Jerrick Harding.
Dimitris Katsivelis is the fascinating question for AEK in this game. The Queen enjoyed a Net Rating of +160 points per 100 possessions in his 12 minutes of the Semi-Finals. If that sounds outlandish, think of it like this: AEK were 1.6 points better than Unicaja in every possession that Katsivelis played.
We don't need to tell you the go-to-guys in this game; you already know that Jerrick Harding will be the man for the moment in the clutch for Rytas.
For AEK, we could easily share a video of James Nunnally doing James Nunnally things. Nobody would be shocked if Dragan Sakota calls out #21 with the game on the line...But no, instead of sharing a video at all, the only thing we will tell say is three letters: M! V! P!
Bartley gave us one of the most touching acceptance speeches ever when he collected his MVP trophy at the end of season awards, and we all know how important it will be for AEK that he touches the ball in the clutch minutes of this Final.
X-Factors
Now we come to the guys who give their team something out of the ordinary, something that their opponents couldn't plan for, and most importantly, something decisive on the outcome of the game.
Rytas will focus their game plan on the likes of Bartley, Nunnally, and Gray. AEK will need to find a way to manage Sargiunas, Smith, and Harding.
Outside of that, there will be space for others to step in and make their mark on the history of this competition.
Based on the numbers we discussed from the Semi-Final, Paliukenas and Katsivelis would seem the obvious answers to this question. However, we are going to look even further afield.
For Rytas, Jordan Caroline could find himself to be integral to his team's chances. He will need to marshall the all-around impact of RaiQuan Gray on the defensive end. On the offensive end, there will be more open shots for him on the perimeter and opportunities to crash the offensive glass.
If he can turn those hustle plays into points at the right time, don't be surprised if it puts wind in the sails of the good ship Rytas.
AEK will get opportunities to shoot the ball in this game, and for that reason, it stands to reason that Vasilis Charalampopoulos may have a great opportunity to play the unsung hero.
If he finds himself shooting and making threes in this game, the extra space on the floor that will create for the likes of Bartley, Nunnally, Gray, and Brown to attack the rim could be enough to turn the tide yellow for AEK.
And finally...
We have already written and watched enough. No doubt we have still missed something that will turn out to be the big story in this Historic Final, but for all the main things we have given you to watch out for, the time for talking is over. Now is the time for action.
AEK BC vs. Rytas Vilnius tips off at 20:00 CET on Saturday, May 9 in the Palau Municipal d'Esports de Badalona. We have never seen an overtime game in the BCL Final Four.
Why do we get the feeling that this could be the one? The scent of fate hangs thick in the air already. This is not a game you will want to miss.